MIMI 2000MIMI FESTIVAL PROGRAM 2000


ARLES THÉÂTRE ANTIQUE /FRANCE
25th of july to 30th of july 2000

informations : A.M.I.
tel : + 33 4 91 11 42 52
fax : + 33 4 91 11 42 53
www.lafriche.org/mimi2000 (online at the end of june)

Accommodations, hotels, camping:
Arles travel agency
tel : + 33 4 90 18 41 20 Press contact :
Anne Ramade tel : + 33 1 42 59 59 20
e-mail : ramade@club-internet.fr

EDITORIAL

After fifteen years of existence, aware of the dangers of introversion, MIMI intends to remain an open space for all types of expression. In point of fact, only a very few of the very powerful (or a few madmen) can be said to truly live in the global dimension. All factors really add up to isolation for the man on the street, who only receives a fake representation of the modern world. From day to day he spins in his own promiscuity. The artist's social responsibility, if he has one, could be to make us touch the true essence of Another. And so, MIMI might be a flash of lucidity lighting up our daily schizophrenia. A fraction of real-time. A therapy, some may say

25th of July 2000 TEAPOT NIGHT L'Ensemble Rayé (CH) Gong (GB)

For centuries, Planet GONG has been familiarising our young people with a salutary form of Dadaism, a relativity for all things serious ­ musical or philosophical - that schools would inoculate. Armed with his magical teapot, the good Doctor Daevid has done much over generations to free the creativity of both the learned and the humble.

In the same poetic vein, L'ENSEMBLE RAYE, compose sophisticated songs far from all virtuoso pyrotechnics or existential tragedies, to be sipped in small amounts, smiling all the while.

26th of July 2000 PROGRESSIVE ROCK NIGHT Pluto (CZ) Thinking Plague (USA)

Two rock bands who have developed a sophisticated personal language, branching out in the directions of unexpected rythms and unorthodox chords, taking real risks in their composing.

PLUTO, led by Pavel Fajt, one of the motors of the Czech independent scene, and THINKING PLAGUE, hailing from the city of Denver, USA, may live on separate planets, but they both tell of dark universes, thoughts both complex and fascinating, and powerfully defend a certain idea of progressive rock. Trends in reverse

27th of July 2000 HISTORY ON THE MOVE NIGHT Kirjuhel (BZH) Kimmo Pohjonen (FI) Tchetche (Ivory Coast) DJ First Rate (GB)

A night especially to shake-up tradition, or, more precisely, to propel tradition into modernity. Two atypical soloists, the young accordionist KIMMO POHJONEN, making more and more of a name for himself, a virtuoso representative of the Finnish will to refuse to debase their folklore, and KIRJUHEL, the category-defying harpist from Brittany, with his inimitable sound, searching through Greek antiquity, weaver of time.

Then the shock between African dance and London nightlife, with the creation-residency of the four dancers of the multiple prize-winning Abidjan dance-troupe TCHETCHE ("eagle" in their Bété language), delving deep into their roots, and FIRST RATE, the amazing London DJ, member of the collective of mythical proportions, Scratch Perverts.

28th of July 2000 REVOLUTIONARY NETWORKS NIGHT Tomas Aragay/General Electrica (Barcelona, E) Compagnie Barbara Sarreau (Marseilles, F)

Two Mediterranean choreographies both paying homage to two mythical figures of movement in space

TOMAS ARAGAY, co-founder of The General Electrica Centre of Barcelona, rising star of Catalonian dance, will be delivering "John Kovach, State of Emergency", inspired by a shock-encounter with John Kovach, the revolutionary "non-dancer"

BARABARA SARREAU, an audacious Marseillaise, whose piece "Lagune", adapted from Nijinsky's Notes, rests on a revolutionary and stripped-down dance language, a space with no concessions.

29th of July 2000 PROVOCATION NIGHT Rubin S. (F) Frederic Le Junter (F) Sara Gebran Company (DK, USA, Venezuela) The Ruins (JP)

The night will start off with two white-out solos, RUBIN S., bulimic DJ of many aliases, radio creator, vinyl illusionist, re-dressing in all impertinence all types of pop song and imposing on electronic musics with salutary humour, and innovation. Then LE JUNTER and his sonic sculptures, grotesque, primitive, and sophisticated, lining up in counterpoint to his critical sense of irony a very eloquent record in "serious" culture (with the dancer Angelin Preljocaj among others). Finally Venezuelan-exile in Denmark SARA GEBRAN's extreme dancing ideally accompanied by the sacred mountain of the Japanese scene, master-drummer Tatsuya Yoshida's duet, THE RUINS.

30th of July 2000 PERFUMES OF THE ORIENT NIGHT Les Amants De Juliette (F) The Oriental Ensemble of the Mediterranean Youth Orchestra

The three Lovers of Juliette improvise a certain form of jazz, leaving behind them the contented purrings of most Hexagonal productions. BENOIT DELBECQ, inspired pianist and member of The Recyclers along with his trumpetist and tabla-playing friends, weave together silence and space to create an enveloping music, dreamlike and sensual, along with a "French touch" from the right area of Paris and a fascination with the rythms of the Orient.

The NOUVEL ENSEMBLE ORIENTAL of the OJM, fifteen young musicians from around the Mediterranean (including a string quartet), assembled around the Turkish composer and flutist Kudsi Ergüner (colleague of Peter Gabriel and Michel Portal, among others), play pieces written by Tanburi Cemil Bey, a renovator from the beginning of the Twentieth Century, free songs from Tunisia, and are busy revalorising the ancestral culture of the Mediterranean region.


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